


Perdition

by NAOA



Category: Gambit (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Injury, Confessional, Depression, Gen, Guilt, Hospitals, Injury, Manipulation, Morlock Massacre, Mutants, References to Depression, Survival, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23516995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NAOA/pseuds/NAOA
Summary: After escaping the Morlock Massacre Gambit is consumed with guilt.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Perdition

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I wrote this back in 2015 and thought I'd share it here. Hope you guys enjoy it. I'm not sure how I feel about it now. I'm not sure if I was sober or not when I wrote this or how well it flows together now. Anyway, thanks for reading!

He was just a kid. A stupid dumb kid who had been suckered. And now he was damned. Remy crawled out of the sewers, the little girl wrapped in his arms. He was bleeding on her and she was shaking. Maybe he was the one shaking. He didn't know. There was blood everywhere and he left her crying in the street, wanting to put space between himself and the disaster and knowing he must get to a doctor. He walked away unsteadily. People would find the girl. He knew that. He had to count on that.

As he stumbled he silently cursed. He was done with Sinister. Sinister had both saved his life and damned him to hell. He couldn't take what he had done but couldn't stop walking either. He was bleeding badly. His stomach was shredded. He stumbled into a hospital, collapsing in the waiting room under the blinding white of florescent lights.

When he awoke again he was hooked up to a machine and the steady beeping it made told him he was alive. Everything hurt and he could barely move. He wished he wasn't. He was in so much pain. He drifted to sleep again.

The second time he awoke his head was clearer but he was in just as much pain. Knowing he couldn't stay he unhooked himself, darting away and stealing a pair of scrubs. And just like that he walked out of the hospital.

Only a few blocks away his posture fell and he doubled over, carefully lifting his shirt to check the bandages. He was not bleeding and he was glad of that. He continued on, shaking as he went. It was probably too soon after surgery for him to be moving. He got as far away as he could before crawling into an alley. He could sleep there. It was a warm night and he could make it. He had done so as a child. He curled up and slept. When he awoke it was day and he felt just as awful. He rose unsteadily to his feet and headed on. He had a locker full of cash in the gym. That was his first stop.

There he grabbed as much as he could and found a gym bag full of clothes to steal. Once changed he was back on the street, looking more or less like everyone else. He checked the newspapers. There was no mention of the morlocks, Maybe the surface would never know.

He wondered if maybe he should try and go back down there. But he didn't. He knew the people he'd lead wouldn't be sloppy. Everyone was dead.

He shook violently as he stood. It was his fault. Innocent people, maybe hundreds, he didn't know, all dead because of him. And the the thought that maybe Sinister wasn't through with him either. He trembled more at the idea. He'd sold his soul to the man what more could he want? He crawled away to a motel and hauled up, trying to heal.

Once his head was clear he found sleeping hard. Every noise outside the door made him jump. He slept with a card in his hand. He was too nervous to eat and too jittery to sleep. When he did occasionally drift off he would jerk awake from a nightmare. It was getting out of hand. He didn't sleep, he didn't eat. He'd gone by the place he'd left the girl but she was gone and no one knew where. He hoped she was somewhere good because if she wasn't then it was one more bad thing that was his fault.

Guilt was consuming him. Panic over took him quite frequently. Sometimes he swore he could head Sinister laughing. Like it was all a joke. Like all those dead people and his own damned soul was a game. He hated it. Shadows made him jump. Shadows that looked like the devil. Like Sinister.

Dogs growling reminded him of Sabertooth. How he had ever sat at a table with that monster of a man was beyond him. The others. . . he couldn't get them out of his head and as he drempt of sewers that ran blood he woke up choking. Gasping through the smell of iron and blood. Water tasted dirty in his mouth. Anything good felt undeserving.

Food felt gross and indulgent. Even liquor had lost it's taste, although he still drank it. More than he had before. Balancing between fear of being caught off guard drunk and a want for escape. Sometimes even alcohol couldn't keep his demons at bay. Sometimes he couldn't drink enough and sometimes he just made himself sick, hurting his insides that always screamed at him and begged him to stop drinking.

Time had little meaning. He stayed couped up in the motel, sheets getting dirty as he awoke covered in sweats night after night. Hos room was a mess but he wouldn't let the maid in. it was his mess and he had to live in it.

He was losing himself. Nothing was constant other than the pain and his own guilt. He could hear screams even when he wasn't asleep. He hated it. He hated himself.

A little over a week later he couldn't take it. He thought he would go mad. Death seemed the only worthwhile option but even that he feared because he was surely damned. What good was it to escape hell on earth, only to be thrown into eternal damnation?

He went to a priest as a last straw.

"Father I've sinned." He said, not even asking for a blessing.

The priest asked him how long since his last confession. He said he didn't know and lost his voice. The priest was kind and told him to take his time.

"It's all my fault." He said softly.

"What is?" The priest sounded kind and kindness was suffocating.

"They're all dead because of me."

And this alarmed the priest. "Who's dead?"

He couldn't say so he went on. "I didn't know they were going to kill them! I swear I didn't but it doesn't matter, I killed them." The priest asked him to slow down, said he couldn't understand his accent. He tried again. That morning there had been reports of bodies turning up in the sewers. He told the priest that it was his fault and the priest told him to get out, told him it was a joke but he assured him it wasn't and this time the priest was horrified. "I've done an awful thing father., I need. . . can I. . . I need. . ." He wanted to ask for forgiveness but couldn't. He felt dirty. Too ashamed to ask.

"If you've done what you say, then you need to go to the police." The priest advised.

He looked up, he could only see the dim outline of the priest through the screen but the idea horrified him. "I can't!"

"The you don't really want to repent. If you won't accept the consequences then how can you expect forgiveness?"

He knew that was right. He shuddered and pushed the door open, leaving it ajar behind him. Back out onto the crowded street he stumbled, feeling lost and sick to his stomach. No salvation for what he had done. He doubted very much that turning himself in would help any either and he cursed Sinister and his own weakness. Oh God, he had let himself be used so easily.

He felt so sick.

He stumbled on, rejecting food and sleep. Jumping at every sound as though tit were a marauder ready to finish him off.

It was two weeks before he noticed a real change in his wounds. They were healing. He was glad of that. It eased the pain. Movement became more easy. Yet the guilt did not abate. Thoughts ran through his head that he had never done a good thing in his life. He'd spent it as a thief and yet could not entertain the thought of changing. He lay in bed miserable, sprawled out and limp. There was nothing in him. He felt twisted and empty.

It was a month later exactly that he was contacted by Sinister who made it quite clear that he had known where he was the entire time. Sinister laughed at him, sneered at him. Told him he was a wast. Even thanked him and then left him with his head spinning and a stomach that had him running for the bathroom. He puked a lot. Somehow his stomach seemed weaker and between the binge drinking and the puking it wasn't long before he was truly sick again. He could barely take it anymore. He felt awful. He felt pathetic and disgusting.

When he was well enough he tried a caper. Took a job stealing a painting and found only a slight lift of his spirits. An adrenalin rush was much needed. For once his heart beat fast and loud not in panic or fear but in excitement and that was all it took for him to throw himself into work. Yet in the back of his mind he remembered that it was just another sin and he had made up for nothing. Redeemed no part of himself.

Even with the small grace he got from a job his empty time was filled with twisted guilt and thoughts he could not escape. Demons chased him through his dreams without end and life had taken a turn towards an endless kind of perdition. Worse yet he yearned for a kind touch or some gentleness in his life but there was none to turn to. He could not return to his family and he had no one. Empty sex was just empty and as of late it had seemed pointless.

As he went on even the thrill of a job seemed to lose it's spark. He was truly losing himself.

And just when things seemed to have reached their terrible pinnacle he found his saving grace. A young girl, pursued by wicked forces was just his chance to save what little self he had left. She was young and helpless to his eye and he could redeem himself by her. He saved her from an evil he did not understand and she in turn saved him. She was kind and strong and not nearly as helpless as he had first supposed, although she was more so than she herself thought. And they latched on to each other. He called her Stormy and loved her instantly. She was courageous and good and many things he wished himself to be.

The spark in her rekindled his spirit and he thought that if only he could look after her and keep her well than maybe he might have a shot at redemption and for all her bickering she loved him greatly and it was a blessed thing to be loved by another. Her courageous little heart was passionate and witty and she was so many things he admired and she put him on a path to goodness and offered him the ultimate chance with the team of mutants known as the X-Men and even when she was no longer a little girl he loved her. She kept him rooted and understood him. And he loved and thanked her beyond any other.


End file.
